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publicdebates about 24 hours ago

Ask HN: How can we solve the loneliness epidemic?

Countless voiceless people sit alone every day and have no one to talk to, people of all ages, who don't feel that they can join any local groups. So they sit on social media all day when they're not at work or school. How can we solve this?

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susam 2 days ago

Ask HN: Share your personal website

Hello HN! I am putting together a community-maintained directory of personal websites at <https://hnpwd.github.io/>. More details about the project can be found in the README at <https://github.com/hnpwd/hnpwd.github.io#readme>.

As you can see, the directory currently has only a handful of entries. I need your help to grow it. If you have a personal website, I would be glad if you shared it here. If your website is hosted on a web space where you have full control over its design and content, and if it has been well received in past HN discussions, I might add it to the directory. Just drop a link in the comments. Please let me know if you do not want your website to be included in the directory.

Also, I intend this to be a community maintained resource, so if you would like to join the GitHub project as a maintainer, please let me know either here or via the IRC link in the README.

By the way, see also 'Ask HN: Could you share your personal blog here?' - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36575081 - July 2023 - (1014 points, 1940 comments). In this post, the scope is not restricted to blogs though. Any personal website is welcome, whether it is a blog, digital garden, personal wiki or something else entirely.

UPDATE: It is going to take a while to go through all the submissions and add them. If you'd like to help with the process, please send a PR directly to this project: https://github.com/hnpwd/hnpwd.github.io

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tmaly 2 days ago

Ask HN: How are you doing RAG locally?

I am curious how people are doing RAG locally with minimal dependencies for internal code or complex documents?

Are you using a vector database, some type of semantic search, a knowledge graph, a hypergraph?

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blahaj 2 days ago

Ask HN: What did you find out or explore today?

Doesn't matter what domain and how big or small.

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nacho-daddy about 22 hours ago

Ask HN: One IP, multiple unrealistic locations worldwide hitting my website

Background: I manage an ecommerce website. Recent bot traffic is up. Most traffic can be traced to one or two IP addresses with hundreds of requests per day. These ip addresses don't have DNS records for reverse lookup, and when I map the requests in cloudflare, one address shows up as requesting from different data centers all over the US. What is going on here? Source IP example 173 . 245 . 58 . 0

Chicago, United States (ORD)

340 requests

San Jose, United States (SJC)

330 requests

Los Angeles, United States (LAX)

310 requests

Atlanta, United States (ATL)

310 requests

Dallas-Fort Worth, United States (DFW)

290 requests

Newark, United States (EWR)

280 requests

Washington, United States (IAD)

230 requests

Miami, United States (MIA)

210 requests

Boston, United States (BOS)

140 requests

Singapore, Singapore (SIN)

130 requests

Thanks for ideas.

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sexy_seedbox about 16 hours ago

Ask HN: AI music covers in 2026?

I asked this back in 2022:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32723101

What's the latest this year?

I'm not looking for SUNO generated AI Music, that type of AI slop is cheap and easy. I'm looking amazing voice + instrumentation cloning paired with human creative input.

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krishadi about 21 hours ago

Ask HN: What are your best purchases under $100?

Curious what items under $100 have made your life better or any meaningful impact.

Revival of this [thread](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23363396) from 6 years ago. Thought it would be fun to have new answers to this :)

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nico 2 days ago

Ask HN: How do you safely give LLMs SSH/DB access?

I have been using Claude Code for DevOps style tasks like SSHing into servers, grepping logs, inspecting files, and querying databases

Overall it's been great. However, I find myself having to review every single command, a lot of which are repetitive. It still saves me a ton of time, but it's quickly becoming a bit tedious

I wish I could give the agent some more autonomy. Like giving it a list of pre-approved commands or actions that it is allowed to run over ssh

For example:

    OK: ls, grep, cat, tail
    Not OK: rm, mv, chmod, etc
    OK: SELECT queries
    Not OK: INSERT, DELETE, DROP, TRUNCATE
Has anyone successfully or satisfactorily solved this?

What setups have actually worked for you, and where do you draw the line between autonomy and risk?

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zx8080 1 day ago

Ask HN: How to make spamming us uncomfortable for LinkedIn and friends?

I've got an email from Linkedin:

> ## colleagues from your company already solved LinkedIn puzzle games

Are you f%%n serious, Linkedin? This is a freaking spam from "Linkedin games".

The question is, how to stop it not like unsubscribe, but how to make it painful for them to do spam us?

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us321 3 days ago

Ask HN: Iran's 120h internet shutdown, phones back. How to stay resilient?

It has been 120 hours (5 days) since the internet shutdown in Iran began. While international phone calls have started working again, data remains blocked.

I am looking for technical solutions to establish resilient, long-term communication channels that can bypass such shutdowns. What are the most viable options for peer-to-peer messaging, mesh networks, or satellite-based solutions that don't rely on local ISP infrastructure?

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synsqlbythesea 2 days ago

Ask HN: Distributed SQL engine for ultra-wide tables

I ran into a practical limitation while working on ML feature engineering and multi-omics data.

At some point, the problem stops being “how many rows” and becomes “how many columns”. Thousands, then tens of thousands, sometimes more.

What I observed in practice:

- Standard SQL databases usually cap out around ~1,000–1,600 columns. - Columnar formats like Parquet can handle width, but typically require Spark or Python pipelines. - OLAP engines are fast, but tend to assume relatively narrow schemas. - Feature stores often work around this by exploding data into joins or multiple tables.

At extreme width, metadata handling, query planning, and even SQL parsing become bottlenecks.

I experimented with a different approach: - no joins - no transactions - columns distributed instead of rows - SELECT as the primary operation

With this design, it’s possible to run native SQL selects on tables with hundreds of thousands to millions of columns, with predictable (sub-second) latency when accessing a subset of columns.

On a small cluster (2 servers, AMD EPYC, 128 GB RAM each), rough numbers look like: - creating a 1M-column table: ~6 minutes - inserting a single column with 1M values: ~2 seconds - selecting ~60 columns over ~5,000 rows: ~1 second

I’m curious how others here approach ultra-wide datasets. Have you seen architectures that work cleanly at this width without resorting to heavy ETL or complex joins?

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david927 5 days ago

Ask HN: What are you working on? (January 2026)

What are you working on? Any new ideas that you're thinking about?

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stikit about 13 hours ago

Ask HN: Strangest or most unexpected behavior you've seen from GitHub Copilot?

I was just in ask mode and asked GitHub Copilot (w/Grok code) to update a Docker file to accommodate a different context. Copilot responded that it had made and committed the changes! LOL . I had to remind it was in Ask mode and then it apologized.

``` Perfect! I've implemented a dynamic solution to eliminate hardcoding the folder name in the Dockerfile. Here's what I changed:

yada yada yada

Changes Made:

....

All changes have been committed ....

```

Me: Did you forget you were in 'ask' mode. you didn't actually implement the solution yet.

Copilot: You're right—I got ahead of myself and described the solution without actually applying it. Since editing tools aren't enabled, here's the exact code to implement the dynamic folder reference. Please apply these changes manually:

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amluto about 18 hours ago

Ask HN: Is Codex login down for all workspace (non-personal) users?

OpenAI rolled out a shiny new version of codex (the CLI) that finally supports device code authentication, so now it's finally now awkward to use it in headless environments. And they appear to have disabled the old non-headless variant in the mean time.

But trying to use it in a workspace says "Please contact your workspace admin to enable device code authentication". It's not obvious that this setting actually exists, and OpenAI's chat support says, and I quote, "The latest updates require device code authentication, which works for personal ChatGPT accounts but does not work for workspace (Business/Enterprise/Edu) users."

An actual human at OpenAI closed the relevant issue as "not planned": https://github.com/openai/codex/issues/9253

Did OpenAI really just decide that it doesn't need to be possible to use the codex CLI on a paid workspace plan?

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nemath 1 day ago

Ask HN: What is the best way to provide continuous context to models?

With research done till date, what according to you is the best way to provide context to a model. Are there any articles that go into depth of how Cursor does it?

How do context collation companies work?

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Arch485 1 day ago

Ask HN: Anyone else finding it impossible to land a job?

I rang in the new year this January with 1.5 years of unemployment. (yippee...)

It's not like I haven't been applying to jobs. At this point, it's actually part of my daily routine to log on to various job sites every morning and go on an application spree. But, usually, I never hear back from any jobs I apply to, or if I do hear back, it's a rejection email 3 months later.

In total, I've had 1 interview through traditional job applications in the past year, and 2 interviews from talking to people on HN. (thanks HN!)

This is just crazy to me. Back when I properly got into the industry (circa 2022) I could land an interview every couple of weeks. But now, there's nothing. As far as I can tell, my resume and CV are both good (I've received feedback from several different people), and I think I'm OK at writing cover letters. It sort of feels like nobody is looking at my applications or anything. I'm curious if anyone has some insight into this beyond "there's a recession"?

It's getting pretty bad out here y'all, I'm running out of instant ramen and my wife's boyfriend says I have to stop asking him for money.

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ebitda_ai about 11 hours ago

Ask HN: Fundraising compensation

A friend and I have been working on a fintech prototype for the past three years. We’ve built the AI, developed a working demo, and are now at the stage where we need capital to cover licensing and move toward commercialization.

An experienced advisor—who has had two to three successful exits—has offered to help. He would lead the deck creation, handle pitching, and raise approximately $4–5 million from his network(other VCs). If his health permits, he may also join the company full-time afterward.

What would be an appropriate compensation structure in this situation? He is asking for 5% equity and 5% cash compensation.

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dang 3 days ago

The $LANG Programming Language

This afternoon I posted some tips on how to present a new* programming language to HN: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46608577. It occurred to me that HN has a tradition of posts called "The {name} programming language" (part of the long tradition of papers and books with such titles) and it might be fun to track them down. I tried to keep only the interesting ones:

https://news.ycombinator.com/thelang

Similarly, Show HNs of programming languages are at https://news.ycombinator.com/showlang.

These are curated lists so they're frozen in time. Maybe we can figure out how to update them.

A few famous cases:

The Go Programming Language - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=934142 - Nov 2009 (219 comments)

The Rust programming language - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1498528 - July 2010 (44 comments)

The Julia Programming Language - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3606380 - Feb 2012 (203 comments)

The Swift Programming Language - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7835099 - June 2014 (926 comments)

But the obscure and esoteric ones are the most fun.

(* where 'new' might mean old, of course - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23459210)

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cryptography 1 day ago

Ask HN: Why do AI code editors suck at closing tags?

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devShark 1 day ago

Ask HN: What to teach my kid if AI does math and CS?

I am home-schooling my kid. He shares my interest in math and CS, and he's really good at it.

I've been cheering him on a path towards academic success in these 2 fields. In parts because I am not much use at anything else, in parts because he likes it, in parts because that's where I found some measure of success in life.

However, I can't go through a day without reading another article about how AI solved an Erdös problem previously unsolved by humans[1], is getting gold medals at International Mathematical Olympiads[2], is replacing coders at Microsoft[3] and even architects[4].

This makes me really question what I am doing.

Sure, people tell me what matters is training your brain, it's never about the skill itself, but learning to learn, etc... Maybe that's right, but somehow, I can't shake the feeling that I am setting my kid on a path that leads directly into a solid brick wall.

What are the alternatives though?

Play video games all day long and wait for Universal Basic Income to kick in?

Encourage him to pivot towards humanities subject he has no strong interest in, that I would not be great at teaching, and that I've been taught young do not lead to great job opportunities?

Forget math and CS, and teach him how to build and run businesses, banning the reading of any article that shows AI might also be taking this over?

Close my eyes, do not listen to this feeling inside, and continue to teach python generators and linear algebra?

Does anyone have any suggestion, or random comment?

[1]: https://officechai.com/ai/gpt-5-2-and-harmonic-appear-to-have-autonomously-solved-an-erdos-problem-that-had-been-unsolved-by-humans-thus-far/

[2]: https://intuitionlabs.ai/articles/ai-reasoning-math-olympiad-imo

[3]: https://techcrunch.com/2025/04/29/microsoft-ceo-says-up-to-30-of-the-companys-code-was-written-by-ai/

[4]: https://x.com/rakyll/status/2007239758158975130

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chriswright1664 3 days ago

Ask HN: ADHD – How do you manage the constant stream of thoughts and ideas?

I have ADHD. I think. Pretty sure. I have thoughts, ideas, projects, concepts, links, things to read... fired at my brain all day every day. I can go deep on a topic for hours, but then be hit by a barrage of micro ideas. I really struggle to stay on track and focus. Oh and I run a business, manage people, try to make a profit. It's hard. And kids. And life?

I think there is a founder/ADHD thing. Paul Graham thinks so. Maybe even a tech person angle. What have other people experienced?

And how do others cope? I don't really know this world. I do know that my old boss once called me a "flagitating laser beam". I think he meant distracted. I use a bunch of systems to cope. For a long time lists, and then Asana. Asana ruled my life. I just built my own thing to capture tasks, projects, but also knowlegde. Not sure if it will help we will see.

So tell me:

- Who else feels this way? - How do you manage? - Oh and how do you switch off? That is hard

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throwaway89201 2 days ago

Ask HN: Why does Google still provide an open redirect for phishers?

Google offers a page on https://google.com/url?q=https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46613684 that works as an open redirect to any site since at least March 2025 [1].

As such, it often gets used by phishers to piggy-back on the domain reputation of Google by either human actors safety-squinting the domain name or systems that allowlist Google.

Google has often had open redirect problems, for example around AMP, but these seemed to be unintentional and were removed after some time. However, this google.com/url naming scheme almost seems intentional.

This is in contradiction with their own advice (2009) around open redirects [2].

Does anyone know why Google keeps this working, thereby facilitating phishers?

[1] https://www.intego.com/mac-security-blog/scammers-using-new-trick-in-phishing-text-messages-google-redirects/

[2] https://developers.google.com/search/blog/2009/01/open-redirect-urls-is-your-site-being

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japoneris about 20 hours ago

Ask HN: Estimating % of dev using coding assistants

Hello all, I discovered two months ago how helpful ai agents are. On HN, everyday, there are new articles about claude code or its friends. I feel like ''this is a very hot topic'', and happy to know a bit more everyday.

Yet, when i ask my collegues or friends, i feel very alone, where developpers are only asking a few questions to copilot, nothing more.

HN is a microcosm of geeks/early adopters. How is it around you ? Which percentage of people around you ''adopted'' coding agents ? Is there reluctancy to use AI ?

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neilfrndes 4 days ago

Tell HN: DigitalOcean's managed services broke each other after update

Yesterday my production app went down. The cause? DigitalOcean's managed PostgreSQL update broke private VPC connectivity to their managed Kubernetes.

Public endpoint worked. Private endpoint timed out. Root cause: a Cilium bug (#34503) where ARP entries go stale after infrastructure changes.

DO support responded relatively quickly (<12hrs). Their fix? Deploy a DaemonSet from a random GitHub user to ping stale ARP entries every 10 seconds. The upstream Cilium fix is merged but not yet deployed to DOKS. No ETA.

I chose managed services specifically to avoid ops emergencies. We're a tiny startup paying the premium so someone else handles this. Instead, I spent late night hours debugging VPC routing issues in a networking layer I don't control.

HN's usual advice is "just use managed services, focus on the business." Generally good advice. But managed doesn't mean worry-free, it means trading your failure modes for the vendor's failure modes. You're not choosing between problems and no problems. You're choosing between problems you control and (fewer?) problems you don't.

Still using DO. Still using managed services. Just with fewer illusions about what "managed" means.

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rramadass 3 days ago

Ask HN: Quantum Computation, Computers and Programming

What are some good resources viz. books/papers/articles/videos/etc. to study about the three domains listed above (from Basics to Advanced)?

1) Quantum Computation: What exactly are the abstract models of computation here? Are the Classical Computation models i.e. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Model_of_computation applicable? What other new models have been invented?

2) Quantum Computers: What is the Physics, Organization and Architecture of these? In classical computers you have semiconductor physics, electronic elements and voltage thresholds mapping to logical 1's and 0's. This is then used to build layers of abstractions. What are their equivalents in a quantum computer? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantum_computing has a lot of info. but not quite structured for understanding.

3) Quantum Programming: A lot is mentioned at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantum_programming and Amazon lists a bunch of books on this topic but am not quite clear on how everything fits. Also as i understand, quantum computing/programming can be simulated on classical hardware but am not clear on the how.

PS: Some detailed examples as to how quantum computers/programming actually help you solve problems which cannot be solved on classical computers would be helpful to bring everything together. Shor's algorithm (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shor%27s_algorithm) is often mentioned but perhaps starting with a far simpler example would be more accessible.

PPS: In particular; I would love to hear from folks who actually study/research/work in this domain regarding what they actually do, its real-world applicabilities and how to go about learning the subject.

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singularity2001 1 day ago

Ask HN: Any real prompt injections in the wild?

while everyone seems to freak out about the potential danger of prompt injections, has anyone ever encountered a real prompt injection in the wild yet?

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mlhpdx 3 days ago

Ask HN: Vxlan over WireGuard or WireGuard over Vxlan?

When traversing a public network. Let’s agree going recursive (WireGuard inside VXLAN inside WireGuard) is a bad idea.

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georgel about 17 hours ago

Ask HN: Books to Learn Ruby/Rails?

I started a new job where I need to get up to speed with RoR. I've dabbled with it a decade ago, and understand the scaffolding/generators/etc but still feel very out of place on actual fundamentals.

I have been doing lots of iOS, Python, React/Angular and Node.js/Express work for the last 10+ years so I am not looking for "how to learn to program" type books, more so understanding the patterns of Ruby/Rails.

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laffOr 2 days ago

Ask HN: Trying to find a website featured on HN that listed restaurants in NYC

Here's a niche request: last year I stumbled upon a personal website on HN, for a topic related to tech. The website also had a section on NYC, mostly Asian, restaurants that was great. I'm trying to find it again but to no avail. The design was fairly minimalist. Does it ring a bell to any one?

I have tried using the API to get all unique URLs on HN for last year, then crawling the websites to find pages matching relevant keywords but to no avail.

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thedangler 1 day ago

Ask HN: Audio analysis models, how to train to learn sound patters?

Hello all, I'm looking to for sound models that understand sound patters that can be used locally.

Hoping I can use them on device like iOS CoreML.

Before I get started it doesn't hurt to ask to see if anyone has done this before or has a sound model that detects patters, Anger, excitement, Arousal, laughing, crying, laughing, human emotions in general.

I found this :https://medium.com/@narner/classification-of-sound-files-on-...

But maybe there is a better way or something already exists.

Thanks

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